Google is busy announcing all sorts of awesome new products like the Nexus 7, but they just revealed something else that will throw many for a loop. Have you ever had a hard time getting video from your devices on your HDTV in the living room? Yes, I have too. The new Google Chromecast (dongle) will bring universal streaming from any device to your TV.
The Chromecast is a small dongle the size of a USB thumb drive, and works over HDMI. Plug this into your TV, sign into your WiFi, and you’re all set. This is what many have been waiting for. Making streaming anything and everything from all of your devices to the TV in the living room, and do it with ease.
The same YouTube you’re familiar with on your phone, tablet, and laptop can all work with Chromecast. It doesn’t matter what the operating system is either, Chromecast does it all. There’s no biased here. Then of course, from the couch you have full control of the YouTube video from the phone, tablet, or whatever else you’re using. This brings universal streaming to your TV.
If you can control YouTube from your smartphone or laptop, you can control it here. Everything is dead simple, and you won’t have to learn anything new. That isn’t all either, you can use sleep mode. This means that while your smartphone screen is off, or if you have to head to Gmail to reply to a business email, the video never stops. Unless you want it to of course.
YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV and tons of other streaming options all come to the TV in a simple, intuitive, and easy to use system. While we love the obvious ease of use on Android, it will work with iOS and those iPhone things, as well as any laptop. Android and iOS working together. Magical.
They’re detailing Netflix up on stage, and hopefully many other services will all work with the Chromecast. Google Music, Pandora, and even tabs from your Chrome browser are all supported. It “casts” everything. Now just let apps like NFL Mobile use cast, and I’m sold! Chromecast will retail for $35, available today on Google Play. I’ll take 3 please!
Is there any way to get similar functionality with an HTPC? I don’t really want to have to reconfigure my HT setup for a dongle plugged into the TV (running audio back to the AVR, adding the dongle and TV input settings to remotes, etc).
If it allows me to stream my Plex to the TV, then I’m sold. I’ll be buying one for travel!
will it support miracast? Or can it play a flash video from a webpage and i want it to play on my tv?
We are waiting for a reply on that this exact moment. You can bet money updates will add more features (appears to not do mirroring yet) and developers will make it awesome!
You can share web-pages, so I’m assuming flash video would work. We’ll see.